When I was ‘hanging the circuit’ with street people, I ran into a white guy in Arizona (known to the nation now as “Aryanzona”), and listened to his tale of woe about murdering an elderly man when he was 16 and paying for it with all of his teenaged days and half of his adult life.

He didn’t get out of prison until his mid-40s and was immediately offered no less than three different high-paying jobs as a ‘mental health consultant.’ He ultimately would stay on those jobs for no more than three to six months and quit, stating that a life in prison had given him no hope about living a good life on the outside. No, he had no college degree for any of these jobs and last I saw of him, he had slit his wrists just enough to force himself to be put back into a mental institution so he could get his disability check. They had stopped him from getting his weekly “blood money” at the Red Cross donation center because he showed up with what appeared to be needle marks on his arms, and apparently, none of those white-privilege jobs that Black men with lesser offenses can’t get at all, were going to work out for him. He was determined to be a lifelong entitled dependent, even if that meant jail and nuthouses for the rest of his life.

Quante Wright, however, is a different story all together.

Not murder, but attempted murder in some gang-related activities, is the life sentence that the world gave him even after he served his time, finished college, and got himself a civilized paying job that a white guy wouldn’t have taken anyway — pay too low, slack on bene’s, and no future in it.

Here’s where it gets tricky, because if Mr. Wright is the typical average statistic, rather than reinvent himself and stay on the straight and narrow, he’s going to end up living “dat life” again and regretting the waste of time it was for him to even go to college and get a degree. Hopefully not, but many of them do give up and toss in the towel, and that is the main reason America’s recidivism rates are through the charts. Not because of laziness or unwillingness to work, but because of institutional racism, the chances of a Black man or woman – degree or no degree- getting past it all and moving on with their lives are MARKEDLY LOWER than whites who have committed the same or even worse crimes. [.pdf]

Quite frankly, I’ve never known a college degree or a work ethic that has surpassed racism in America, not even the job of President of the United States. Nothing we can ever do right, or even the effort to right our wrongs or correct our misguided trajectories as Black Americans, is ever “good enough” in this white-privileged system.

The jury is out on whether or not racism plays a role in these matters, as it most assuredly and without any more room for debate or doubt, DOES.

However, just enough white people fall into the “system trap” to make it appear that it has nothing to do with racism — and no doubt about it, they will sacrifice a few of their own from time to time just to skew the conversation.

One would think, with the world we are living in today, that if Mr. Wright could just change his skin color to white and attempt to kill or kill a Black person instead, get a swastika tattoo, and throw up Nazi gang signs, he would be constitutionally protected, socially acceptable, congratulated, and given any title of distinguished notoriety, plus any job at nearly any rate of pay that he asks for.

Farfetched? Not hardly.

It’s that serious.

Quante, if you’re listening, there is not much of a point in “going the legal rounds” with the car dealership that employed you and then fired you after stating they never knew you were a former gang member and you never told them. They are going to win that fight regardless of what you can prove or not prove about what you did or did not tell them when they hired you. You will have less trouble opening a car dealership of your own next door to them and becoming their biggest competitor. *snark detector*

It leaves room for pause, however, about what are the obvious parallels that can be drawn between a Black person who makes all the right decisions and a Black person who makes all the wrong decisions, and both of them end up in the same situation.

Food for thought. #letthatmarinate.